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The Sovereign Self: Crypto, Blockchain, and Your Digital Persona
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00:01La fact that there are ways now due to cryptocurrency technologies that you're about to tell us about
00:06that allow us all to protect our ever-growing digital footprints out there facing data breaches,
00:12concerns about privacy, and apparently there are solutions.
00:15Just before we start, Jonathan Levin, you have not only created, co-founded Chainalysis and now the CEO,
00:22you've given evidence before Congress repeatedly about these issues.
00:26I'd like you just for our audience to give us an idea of crypto and its adoption and where we
00:33are, just to sort of begin.
00:34Yeah, great to be here. Fantastic to be in Paris for Vivotech.
00:39We have come a long way since I first came to Paris talking about Bitcoin in 2013.
00:45So I've been sort of around the space for a long time.
00:48And I think the amazing thing that we've seen today is that, you know, blockchain technology moves the same amount
00:56of value
00:57as some of the biggest payment networks in the world.
01:01So if you think about last week, you know, $500 billion worth of stable coins are being transferred.
01:09These are digital representations of normal currencies.
01:14And on an annual basis, those rails now actually transfer as much value as the rails of, say, Visa or
01:23MasterCard or PayPal.
01:25And that's where, you know, I think when people think about cryptocurrency and they think about products,
01:32they think about, you know, this whole conference is about, you know, useful technology that is in our everyday lives.
01:39Actually, these rails, this technology has been proven out to actually be, you know, incredibly secure and valuable
01:47and useful in many people's lives across the world, which is very different to the world that we were talking
01:52about,
01:52you know, 10 years ago when we first started.
01:54It's fascinating. And of course, your experience, Pascal Gauthier, as the CEO and co-founder of Ledger,
02:01it is a French, initially, cryptocurrency wallet platform, is that as well, that its use is expanding.
02:09Many people don't understand it yet, but its use is expanding.
02:12And that's something you see in a great deal.
02:13What is driving its growth, the growth in its usage?
02:17Well, so first, fun story, you know, Jonathan and I met in 2014.
02:24I tried to hire him. He said, because I was building a data company at Keiko, he said, no, thank
02:29you.
02:29And then he went on, built Channel Aziz and made a much bigger company.
02:33Did the right thing, apparently.
02:34No, he did the right thing.
02:37Look, what was fascinating day one with, you know, Channel Aziz, Ledger and all companies built in this crypto world
02:45is that you had no choice but to build a global business day one.
02:50And so, because your business is global day one and it comes with a bunch of issues,
02:55but also what's great is you get to scale pretty quickly.
03:00Because if you have customers everywhere in the world, well, you know,
03:04it's better than to have just a few customers in France.
03:06Today, Ledger's business is 2% to 3% in France, 97% to 98% outside of France.
03:13Our biggest market is the U.S. with between 30% and 40% depending on the months.
03:18And so, the global nature of the business makes it, you know, very big right away.
03:26And we knew right away that we were working on something spectacular.
03:32And the reason why me, in 2014, I went to Bitcoin, I built a company before called Criteo,
03:37which is a French company that we listed in the NASDAQ in 2013.
03:42There are some people in the room that also worked on the same project.
03:45I didn't want to work anymore on protocols that were overly dominated by corporate America,
03:52Google, etc., so the web.
03:54And so, I saw Bitcoin as an opportunity to work on a new protocol
03:57and build a gigantic company based on something really new.
04:02And so, it's all of these things that makes the opportunity so great.
04:05And because why? You know, the world needs better security for consumer.
04:10Hackers are hacking more.
04:13We have more and more digital value.
04:15We have more and more digital secrets.
04:17And if you think about this like that, like, it's not just about cryptocurrency.
04:20And we're going to talk about, you know, decentralized identity in a minute.
04:24But it's about everything that you own that is online that is a secret and that you need to protect.
04:29And we all know that your computer and your phone were not designed to protect your secrets.
04:34All of you have been hacked maybe once, twice, many times.
04:38And there are people whose job is not like yours.
04:41Their job is to hack you every day.
04:43Hackers are not just kids in a garage or in their mother or grandmother basement.
04:48Hackers are organizations, very well organized, very well financed, that are after you, after your money.
04:53And you have a trend now with money going on these public rails to transfer value with more and more
05:00digital secrets, more and more digital value online and more and more hackers.
05:04And so that's why Ledger and that's why we're here and that's why it's big.
05:08And the solution then, self-sovereign, the self-sovereign identities.
05:14Tell us a little bit about that, Jonathan, for those of us who may not understand.
05:17Yeah, so many people will understand that their identity and most people think about their identity as, you know, a
05:26passport, a static piece of your driving license.
05:30Or, you know, I see people in France, they take out these books or something that they have.
05:37And they think that that is their identity.
05:39Well, when it comes to, you know, being able to prove that you are yourself, that's becoming a lot more
05:45difficult in a world of AI.
05:47And if you think about, you know, our needs to understand these static images or even who someone is on
05:55the internet, when you have, you know, AI that's able to replicate video or images, you actually have a very
06:04difficult job of being able to prove you are who you are.
06:08Or you are someone that can walk into a bar because you're over the age of 18 or I guess
06:15the age in France is like 14 or something.
06:19You know, like the way that we would have to think about this is, you know, how can you create
06:24an identity system that actually allows an individual to own it themselves?
06:31It doesn't rely on a nation state to give you an identity document.
06:36It doesn't rely on your bank to give you a document.
06:39How do you create a world in which an individual themselves can prove that they are who they say they
06:47are online without any other dependency?
06:50And that's the idea of, you know, self-sovereign identity is I have secrets, I have attributes that I can
07:03prove to the world are mine just through me possessing these attributes.
07:09And when you're able to do that, we can now unlock the ability for commerce, for online applications, for other
07:17things that are getting increasingly difficult with the, you know, fraught identity system that we have from the 1970s if
07:26you think about credit cards or from, you know, centuries of, you know, the sovereign state giving us, you know,
07:33documents about our person.
07:34So it is a question then, Pascal, of making it easier for us to prove who we are, but also
07:39taking ownership of everything that's out there that happens to belong to us.
07:43Yeah, that's correct.
07:44So people overlook this cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, and don't understand that it's the real revolution.
07:57AI is amazing, but AI goes with crypto and quantum.
08:02The three technologies go together.
08:04And for me, AI is an evolution.
08:06AI exists since 95 and it's been evolving.
08:09Cryptography also has been an evolution, but Bitcoin has been a revolution because what Bitcoin created is actually marvelous and
08:19the, and freedom, freedom in the world depend on that technology.
08:23And why?
08:24Because suddenly you can own something digital that is unique and that is yours.
08:29So Bitcoin was the invention of digital private property.
08:33And if you think...
08:34The internet is closing the doors now.
08:36Please make your way to the exit and don't forget to pay for your life.
08:39I'll have to leave.
08:40See you tomorrow.
08:41There, please.
08:41Okay, bye.
08:43And so, oh my God, like that was about the worst.
08:47Okay, so let's go.
08:48The digital private property.
08:50And why is that cool?
08:51Because you all know also that your digital lives are entrapped into a system that you don't control.
08:58You have to give everything you own to a third party, whether it's your money, whether it's your identity, anything
09:03online is not yours.
09:05And you also know that what's happening in the world right now, which is technology is used to control humans.
09:11You have now a credit score in China.
09:13If you're not a good citizen, your credit score goes down.
09:16And why?
09:16Because all your interactions are completely tracked into a system.
09:20And so now, to claim back freedom and to claim back what is yours is very important for the future
09:27of humanity.
09:28Because suddenly, I can be a digital being and own my stuff.
09:32My secrets are mine.
09:33And I decide if and with whom I want to share them.
09:36And this started with Bitcoin, but this is going to apply to many things.
09:39And this decentralized identity is this idea.
09:43These are my passkeys.
09:45These are my passwords.
09:46They are mine.
09:46I can control them.
09:47I have them on the ledger, which is already available.
09:50I have my data on my ledger, which is already available.
09:53And more and more are coming.
09:54And so now that this is mine, then I can decide what I do with it.
09:58And it's not the alpha and omega.
09:59So there's a question, well, will everything be a ledger and private property?
10:05No, no.
10:05You have a bank still, but also now you have the opportunity to own things, which is something that is
10:12very important for democracy.
10:13Without private property, there is no democracy.
10:15It's a big leap.
10:17I suppose, in people's minds to make.
10:19I'd like you, Jonathan, perhaps to address the question of regulation.
10:23People are worried about things they don't understand.
10:25It sounds, according to both of you, this is the future, naturally, that we're going to head towards.
10:29Are we being over-regulated or under-regulated?
10:32When we think about the regulation of both identity, which we'll put in one bucket, and then cryptocurrencies in another
10:40bucket, what we've seen is that there is the organic adoption of technology, which has to happen first.
10:48When it comes to any form of technology, the government can't set rules of the road or should not regulate
10:56something that isn't being widely used by a population.
11:01And so the first thing that happens is there's this organic adoption.
11:05And that's exactly what we've seen with cryptocurrencies, is that now we have Mika in Europe.
11:10You have a standard for being able, as an institution, to buy and sell cryptocurrency to customers of yours and
11:19how it should be stored.
11:20And so that framework, while it's not perfect, gives institutions in Europe the rules of the road.
11:28And we also see this in America.
11:30What you'll see next is that there will be legislation in America to represent a U.S. dollar on a
11:37blockchain.
11:38And this will be a piece of legislation that's going through the Senate and the House at the moment to
11:43give, again, rules of the road about how to use these new rails for payments.
11:48And we need that for commercial uses.
11:52When it comes to sort of identity and how this gets regulated and how we think about the liability issues,
12:01which is at the core of what identity means, in my opinion, we wait for there to be use of
12:07the technology.
12:08And that is happening.
12:09Hundreds of millions of people are touching this technology every year.
12:15And that needs to grow to a level where we now will have, you know, systems adopted that can now
12:22have government regulation and guidance around it.
12:26You'll be able to open a bank account with it.
12:28You'll be able to pay another institution with it.
12:30And that's where I think the rules of the road are really important.
12:34And we get those as organic adoption happens.
12:37Please.
12:38So this panel is going to be more fun than what I thought it would be because I didn't think
12:42I would disagree with Jonathan, but I slightly disagree.
12:44Much more fun.
12:45So this is fun.
12:47No, so I think Europe made a big mistake by overregulating too fast.
12:50Europeans are regulated too much.
12:51Yeah, my God, Micah is a catastrophe.
12:53And Europeans have this bad habit of doing regulation with in mind consumer and the greater good, which you think
13:02is what should be done.
13:04But, you know, hell is paved, you know, the road to hell is paved with good intention.
13:09And so why?
13:09Because when you regulate, you should think about the consumer, but you should also think about the business.
13:13And often the businesses are not being consulted and we regulate against European businesses.
13:20And I disagree fundamentally with this idea that regulation is good for business because it could be if it was
13:27taking in consideration businesses, which Micah didn't.
13:30And the proof is in the pudding.
13:31So, you know, I think it's easy to say that Europe has completely lost the game of trading.
13:37There's no trading platform in Europe.
13:39There was one, Bitstamp, got acquired cheap, 200 million by Robinhood.
13:46Yeah, Robinhood, thank you.
13:47And trading happens outside of Europe.
13:50So what you do with regulation in Europe, and thank God Micah is only applying to, let's say, you know,
13:57trading platforms and such.
13:58It doesn't apply to self-custody and, you know, and this world of mathematics.
14:03And by the way, mathematics cannot be regulated.
14:06But what Micah did is, you know, you prevent businesses to grow in Europe because you have a regulation hurdle
14:11that makes it more expensive to take your business to market.
14:14You let businesses like Binance, Bybit and such grow into, you know, zones where there is a void of regulation
14:23or regulation makes it much easier.
14:24And then they come back to Europe to deliver the services that they build outside and get a Micah license
14:29in Austria, for example, Bybit.
14:31And so I think Europe has a tendency to block businesses to grow in Europe.
14:37And then we're dependent on American corporation to buy our businesses or Chinese corporation to come in Europe.
14:42And I think this is how you lose the game.
14:44And in the U.S., they do things differently.
14:46So it's very difficult to pass a law in the U.S.
14:49And they've done it very carefully.
14:50And I think the U.S. might have a better regulation going forward that is pro-business.
14:54And Europe doesn't.
14:56And, Jonathan, you're based in Europe.
14:57Correct me if I'm wrong.
14:58But the Americans are moving to greater deregulation of this.
15:01And so that's going to make the playing field even less level, I assume.
15:05Yeah.
15:05I mean, America is going to lead the way in this sense.
15:09And you can see this administration being very friendly towards it.
15:14But I would just say that, you know, in Europe, everyone's, like, wondering about, like, what does the administration think?
15:20And, you know, how is your administration doing this?
15:23The reality is that when it comes to stablecoin regulation, it's been a big bipartisan issue for a long time.
15:30And if you look at the scale of which, you know, stablecoins own U.S. treasuries, which are really critical
15:38for the U.S. to continue to operate, you know, they're in, you know, the top 15, top 10, you
15:45know, country-level reserves at the moment for U.S. treasuries, which puts, you know, this industry at that sort
15:55of strategic level for the U.S. government as a whole,
15:59not just one party.
16:01And so, you know, I think that, you know, Americans will get stablecoin regulation right.
16:06I think the big challenge, and this is where Pascal and I will agree, is that, you know, the Europeans
16:11won't have a very good reaction to that.
16:13And, you know, I think that when you think about the world of commerce as it's moving today, you have
16:21to think about a global market.
16:23You have to have a global mindset.
16:24And what you think, what I think happens today is that the U.S. continues to export the dollar globally,
16:32you know, on these new rails, and the world has to respond with better products.
16:37I mean, that's really what it comes down to.
16:39Looking ahead, then, and given that decor you've planted, what comes next?
16:45What do you think, Pascal, is the next big thing?
16:47How quickly does this change or what are the products we're going to be looking at here in Europe or
16:52everywhere, actually?
16:54I mean, you know, I think this is quite big already.
16:56You know, we are in the very beginning of AI.
17:00We are the very beginning of sort of cryptocurrency and that whole crypto security movement.
17:05And we are the very beginning of quantum.
17:07And I was saying those three go together.
17:09And why?
17:09Because, you know, AI is digital abundance.
17:12Crypto is digital scarcity.
17:14So crypto is kryptonite to AI.
17:15And to prove that you're human and that you're not an AI bot, you need to sign cryptographically with your
17:20decentralized identity.
17:22And so that's going to be very important.
17:23You can combine AI and crypto, so AI agent and crypto, because crypto is programmable, to do a lot of
17:29cool applications and, you know, pay on the fly on microtransaction and many other payment applications.
17:34And so, you know, I say to the French president and to this dinner, I was invited at the Élysée
17:42Palace on Wednesday, that it's cool to talk about AI, but you cannot talk about AI without crypto and quantum.
17:48And why quantum?
17:49Because quantum is coming to break crypto.
17:51So you have to build quantum-resistant cryptography.
17:55And so this is what we're doing at Ledger.
17:56The next products will be already quantum-resistant.
17:59And quantum comes to make AI consume less energy.
18:02And so that's also going to be very important.
18:04And so when you look at these technologies, you have to look at them in this triptych.
18:08And so that's what I think is the next big thing.
18:11And that's what I think Europe should be focused on, to build those three pillars, because those three pillars, you
18:15need those three pillars to basically build the future of online.
18:18Because they intersect and interconnect.
18:20Jonathan, do you agree?
18:21Yeah, I think that when you think about these different technologies, and I think the sort of exciting elements of
18:28new technologies is they open up like brand new markets.
18:31And I think when you think about, you know, what I was saying at the beginning of this, which is
18:36like stable coins move as much value as Visa and MasterCard, they don't replace the transactions that Visa and MasterCard
18:45were doing.
18:45The number of transactions that Visa and MasterCard do this year are continuing to increase in traditional rails.
18:52The thing is, is that there are just new use cases for commerce.
18:58There are new reasons why people are transacting.
19:02And when I think about sort of, and I think very similar to Pascal about, you know, these buckets of
19:07technology, I think that, you know, the biggest interesting connection between AI and cryptocurrency is that, you know, cryptocurrency actually
19:19opens up the possibility of new types of transactions that were not possible before cryptocurrencies existed, but the AI really
19:29needs.
19:30And why I say that is that, you know, the internet as we've known it has been an internet based
19:37on advertising revenue.
19:38It's based on attention that we as humans give and then, you know, the conversion rate of us actually buying
19:45products afterwards.
19:47You know, when you look at web traffic today and you look at how brands are getting, you know, their
19:52internet traffic, you see that a lot of it is being driven by AI models.
19:56These are not humans arriving at those websites anymore.
19:59It is models looking at websites, consuming content, and serving that back to, you know, consumers who are looking at
20:06it through ChatGPT.
20:07And this breaks the fundamental economic model of the internet and requires a different type of transaction layer between AI
20:18models that are looking at content and content producers that are actually putting stuff out there on the internet.
20:24And so when I think about, like, where these things intersect, cryptocurrency is actually there to create a new layer
20:31of transacting that needs to exist for a new type of web that is emerging.
20:36And it's happening faster than you could possibly expect.
20:40I track, you know, at Chainalysis, even as a B2B company, I track the amount of traffic that comes to
20:46our website from, you know, these, you know, chat applications, and it's on, like, an exponential curve.
20:52Wow.
20:53Even in a B2B space, not in a consumer space.
20:56And so, you know, this is happening really rapidly, and you'll start to see, you know, AI companies work with
21:02crypto companies to think about reimagining the economic model of the web.
21:07That is fascinating.
21:08Maybe the last word to you.
21:09You said something really interesting to me earlier about crypto and how we'd had the Bretton Woods system, and that
21:14naturally, what you're both talking about is that we're heading towards a new system.
21:18You've made the point that fundamentally, you think crypto is the future, irrevocably, and it's a good thing.
21:23Yeah, completely.
21:24So, let me just do a test.
21:26Who uses AI on a daily basis, personally or professionally?
21:31Everyone.
21:32Okay, everybody.
21:33Who owns cryptocurrency?
21:36Wow.
21:36So, voilà.
21:37So, Viva Tech, five years ago, nobody would have raised their hands, no for one or the other, and so,
21:44voilà.
21:44And so, this is the intersection of cryptocurrency and AI, just in front of you.
21:48And what was the question?
21:50That this is, well, you just made the point, I think.
21:53Voilà.
21:53So, that was the point.
21:54And thank you.
21:54Thank you so much, both.
21:56Thank you so much.
21:56Thank you, everybody.
22:00Thank you.
22:02C'est dingue.
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